Until August 31st, the world record for CPU frequency stood at 8.309GHz, but armed with an FX processor, AMD and some of the best overclocking enthusiasts out there went faster and have set a new world record of 8.429GHz.

The processor used is the brand new, yet to be released FX-8150 Bulldozer chip. That processor runs at 3.6GHz, has 8-cores, 16MB of cache, and a 125W TDP. As revealed yesterday, it’s also expected to cost no more than $266 when it finally sees a release before the end of the year.

Getting the 8150 chip up past 8GHz is not something your typical home overclocker would be able to achieve with the cooling available to him/her. In attaining the new record, the overclocking team of Brian McLachlan, Sami Makinen, Aaron Schradin, and Simon Solotko, moved from liquid nitrogen cooling to helium. It took a few attempts, but the top frequency as recorded by CPU-Z was a “perfect for Rage” 8.429GHz.

It’s important to note, however, that such extreme cooling is only required to get to those insane speeds. AMD noted that just by using air cooling or sub-$100 water cooling it was possible to get the multiplier-unlocked FX-8150 above 5GHz. That should come as good news for anyone considering investing in the new chip and willing to spend a little extra on a decent cooling solution for their rig. That’s assuming AMD ship a version with the multiplier unlocked, of course.

Check out the video below to see the overclock happen. It’s definitely not a cheap or clean way to perform an overclock, but people do go to the extremes to set these records. Still, we’re not quite at the 10GHz speed Intel predicted would happen this year.

Reader Comments

Anonymous

Take that Intel. Although Intel leads in having the smallest transistors (now they are pushing 22nm for Ivy Bridge), AMD still does better in extreme cold like this. Also, Bulldozer is supposed to have amazing multi-threading abilities, since the cores share a lot of resources.

RC_Garber

Also the hope peeps will notice it said 5ghz on liquid cooling,,, NIIIIICE!!!!